Courage Rises
by aragonite
Summary: A missing body discovered; a madman killing without apparent motive, and strangeness stirring in the higher offices. Getting Sherlock Holmes on the case isn't the half of the strangeness, for the Amateur Detective (as usual) seems to know a lot more than he is saying. This was cut out of the novels due to overwhelming length.
1. Chapter 1

**London**

_**Colchester Building (Gregson Residence):**_

If any philosophy summed up the weather in London it was the simplest dictum:

"Man wastes energy fretting over what he cannot control."

Thus, Inspector Tobias Gregson did not deign to whine when a perfectly ghastly wind threw a wet storm of sopping cinders from the factories up against his tiny window, jolting he and the wife out of bed a good five minutes before the alarm was set to shrill. He blinked in the confusion of the early hour and tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Next to him, Mrs. Gregson managed to make a long, slow exhalation through her fine nostrils (a habit he had unconsciously picked up for his own), and crawled out of the warmth of the five quilts. She reached for their wrappers and handed him his, shrugging her own over her slender shoulders in the same motion.

If Gregson could be likened to a shambling bear, his wife was a heron with delicate step and a dancer's co-ordination and the nose of a perfumer and a bright alert eye for events, be they as insignificant as a minnow in a pool. She was the entire reason why Gregson couldn't complain about the loss of five minutes' sleep.

"Five minutes, Pet!" Gregson protested his much-faster helpmeet (for _this_ he could whine), but he was already talking to the thin air. The precious space occupying her mass was now concerned with occupying molecules of the atmospheric order.

The big man took a deep breath and wished for a cigarette, knowing it would have to wait until he was well out of the building. A woman who could tell if bread had risen with spring or city water was not impressed with burning bitter leaves inside her house.

A fresh gust sent wind against the glass; cinders clattered and slid greasy grey tracks on their way down to dirty the whitewashed sill even as the air of the room bent inward and outward from the strike. Glass rattled like dried peas in a child's rattle. Gregson was reminded of Sherlock Holmes' (in)famous left in the boxing match the Yard was not supposed to know about.

_**Whump**_. Hair-Trigger Holmes' Elemental Counterpart gave the Colchester another left-cross. Gregson sourly hoped the building had it coming.

He grabbed up his elderly timepiece and glared at it, but the silver turnip had all the respect the inanimate gave the inanimate. "Bloody Hades Across the Styx," he growled (softly, out of his wife's considerable powers of earshot), "It's still Blue o'clock in the morning!"1

Judging by the lack of sympathy that failed to manifest with the building's alleged resident boggart, the Powers that Be didn't care. That was just as well for Gregson. He didn't believe in boggarts or any other physical representations of the un-orderly world of mediums and mentalists.

He was still grumbling as he crawled out of bed and stumbled to the table. There would be hot tea, just the perfect tint of brew (the color of his wife's hair) and it wouldn't take more than a wink to toast the bread over the fire...a perfect start for a chill spring morn.

Fortified for activity if nothing else, Gregson stepped outside his building and pressed his back into a familiar nook to shield his hands as he lit his cigarette. With the first take of strong blue smoke he felt his spine shift to friendlier realms. With a deep breath he blew a cloud, then a ring. _Fantastical_. He smiled and did it again even as the storms raged over the roof-tops of the beleaguered city. The light lavender-blue ring floated through the coarser atoms of rain and cinder, melted gently into the hammering curtain that was February's last gasp of discomfort to London.

_Another day, another duce_, he grinned in his customary defiance, glad he was early; he'd need the extra time to get through the storm.

* * *

_**Paddington Street (Lestrade residence):**_

"I see."

The voice did not compliment her husband.

Clea Lestrade _nee_' Cheatham whirled out of the back room, arms still full of sorting-laundry, to find him standing stock-still before the tiny thing that was his writing desk. A Constable with a face as red as a new beetroot stood with his helmet tucked smartly under his arm. Smelly steam curled from his shoulders and head; it must be a damp day outside.

Geoffrey had been caught in the midst of dressing by the door-knock. He was still in the stage between pulling his waistcoat over his braces and his good brown coat still hung upon its hook by the fire. He looked up at her with the telegram crushed in his fingers. His face was drawn tight, like paper watered and then left to dry too quickly.

Clea thought fast, aware that she should not say or do anything that would make the Constable think her husband's loyalties were in any way conflicted. She didn't know the youth just yet—but she was certain she would soon. That shock of red beard would be hard to forget.

"Mr. Lestrade," she requested, "Would your man like a cup of tea before you leave?"

Geoffrey instantly looked to the hapless Constable. "Conniff?"

"Sir." Conniff stammered. "I'm fine, sir. Thank you for asking sir. I mean, Missus Lestrade."

"Well, I am going to have a cup of tea." Lestrade informed him sharply. "If I don't have at least _that_ before I cross the door-way, I'll have to explain myself to the P.S. And I for one, wouldn't like to tell Dr. Roanoke that I know his job better than Himself."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." Conniff gulped hard, shifting his awkward leather collar about his thick throat.

"So I advise you to go back downstairs and tell Mrs. Collins I told you to get a cuppa." Geoffrey was already standing, his palms pressing down on the scanty flat surface of the desk. "Once we leave, it'll be hard to say when we'll next stop for any bit of a rest or bite to eat."

That last was said directed at Clea, and she kept a sober face in the room even as she smiled on the inside. Geoffrey was still growing into his confidence as a married man. She didn't envy him the struggle. It was a fine line to keep one's loyalty with one's hearth and home and at the same time stay to the duties of the Yard where the least glance out of line could spell disaster.

"If you'll be out that long, you should take more than tea." Clea had disposed of the laundry and went to the back shelf against the window where a box rested, chilled inside and out from an unstoppable crack at the sill. She pulled out a wax-paper packet and a frosted metal flask.

"You've thought ahead." He murmured under his breath, and his mouth was smiling.

"I try." But she didn't like his countenance. "What is it?"

The direct approach with Geoffrey worked best. He glanced over his shoulder to be certain Conniff was long-gone first. "They think they've found Browne's mortal remains."

Clea felt herself turn into a block of ice. "Oh." She breathed.

"The case was turned over to the River Police almost as soon as I was pulled above ground." Geoffrey still sounded tired and befuddled at the memory. "So finding him dropped clean out of our hands—the Rail Police weren't at all pleased about it!"

Clea nodded. She understood by now that the mad levels of competition between the different divisions were birthed from the government's policies of jurisdiction. A policeman simply could not infringe upon another's territory unless they had permission (usually written and approved) first.

"I wanted to find him. I did. They wouldn't let me go back under." He admitted. "The rat-catchers and the usual tunnel-men who poke about in those lost places...they said that whole section was too dangerous for anyone, and they wouldn't go in at all...that was the last I'd heard of it till now."

Clea watched as Geoffrey turned to the narrow fire-board above the burning coal and lit up his everyday pipe. He was agitated; his hands were shaking a little and that meant he was trying not to be angry. Geoffrey wasn't fond of his temper, and when he felt threatened by his control he started doing little repetitious things, such as flicking his watch-case open and shut over and over, or checking his cufflinks...this time he was running the fingers of his right hand up his left arm, then down the wrist-bone, and up again to the reinforced elbow stitching.

Even as she wondered what was in his thoughts, he absently moved his hand to the watch-chain. Ah.

He stopped when she passed him his tea-cup and his held to cup and saucer as though they would crack under his touch.

"I doubt I'd even know that place now." She heard him mutter. "It was bad enough but I had the nightshade, and-"

"Ey up." Clea told him tightly. "No more, not ever. I won't wring you into a promise, l know you can't think that way. But as long as my voice counts, I don't want you to ever take that poison ever again."

He didn't argue. With Conniff safely out of witness, he managed to go through the intricate dance-steps of dressing and gulping down his tea at the same time. Clea found his new gloves and smiled as he grinned at her forethought. They were still new in their marriage; she wondered if she would ever take that smile for granted but a part of her doubted she would.

"You'll be careful," she admonished. "There's still a madman running through London!"

"There's _several_ if you count the likes of us," Geoffrey muttered wryly with a scowl to the flurried elements against the window, but his growl was subdued. The string of deaths plaguing the western side was puzzling and worthy of headaches. No one as yet found a common ground between the victims, and there were no witnesses (even unreliables), to describe the killer.

Geoffrey poured out one last cup, stared at the mess blowing by the glass, and shook his head in defeat. It would be a dirty day. "I thought March was supposed to go out like a lamb." He saucered and blowed through his final tea quickly.

"In wild March weather, white waves break tether," Clea recalled the verse. "Be sure you stay put on the earth-" Remnants of a newspaper went sailing by their window at that moment, and they both laughed wryly. He paused long enough to see that the streets fifteen feet below were clear, and kissed her on the top of her smooth blue-black head.

They lingered together for a moment, breathing in the mingled scents of her kitchen lemons and cinnamon teas and his beloved myrtle wash—spicy and astringent. It suited him.

He was gone a minute later, but their rooms smelled like London street-rubbish and heavy North Sea rains long after he left.

* * *

Three hours later, Lestrade was ensconced within his small office with a stack of papers at his left, and a writing-tablet at his right. Grains of cinder and soot had gotten inside his coat and hat and it seemed as though every damned time he blinked, shifted or coughed the fog out of his lungs, black grains scattered across his desk.

Only three hours on duty. It felt like ten.

Knuckles rang on the door-frame, and Sgt. Galliwick leaned his head in.

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Lestrade," he said respectfully. "But-"

"But it doesn't serve the Yard's wise use of time to see to the body at this time." Lestrade cut in wearily and rudely.

Galliwick (Lestrade often wondered if that was really his name), made a face. "Very sorry, sir."

Lestrade grumbled a little. "Not your fault." He grumbled some more, and celebrated Galliwick's hasty departure by leaning his head into his hand, staring at wobbling line of print.

Damn it to hell.

Why wire him about Browne, then hastily give the case to Gregson instead of himself, when _he_ was the last man on Earth to see Browne alive? For that matter, he was the first man to see him dead. Lestrade wasn't crowing about one of the worst times of his life; but didn't he just have the luck?

Gregson coming into the Yard first, an hour ahead of his usual duty-shift. Wasn't _that_ just the bloody luck too. They probably couldn't wait to fob this on him, figuring if his worst rival got the case, he'd avoid him like the plague.

There was something fishy about all of this. Seeing as how Browne had been murdered by an inside agent for London's secret organisation of crime... a murderer who'd operated as a law-abiding and loyal officer for the Rail Police up until that awful day...Lestrade drew angry designs into the blotting-paper with his fingernail as he thought. He knew a cover-up when he smelled it! Something _was_ going on with the Home Office and the Foreign Office. When those two had to be brought in on the same case of theatre...well they'd be lucky to know what their shoe size was at the end of the day!

At least the War Office wasn't involved... Lestrade was smart enough to take his blessings where they were.

* * *

1 Blue o'clock: Victorian slang for the early hours when the night is purple. Very early indeed!


	2. Chapter 2

_**Baker Street:**_

Dr. John H. Watson was more than a long-suffering soul. He was a front-seat observer to the theatrical stage that was (in his humble opinion) the most interesting man in all of England.

This was no light opinion. The English were proud of their reputation as the world's John Bull: an Anglo-Saxon country gentleman, fond of his beer and his country estates and simple investments, smoking a pleasant pipe and standing as the voice of reason as his peers (representations of other countries), complained and fussed and failed to share his sensible opinions. John Bull was a comfortably conservative sort—self-mocking more than witty, the type of fellow adjusting to change slowly with the wisdom of thousands of years' experience. Paired with this hidebound mentality was the admittedly uniquely British ability to be...eccentric.

John Watson's old Rugby instructor had once proclaimed that eccentricity was the luxury of being English, for it was 'the inevitable portion of the creativity and problem-solving gifts unique to the race.' Watson (to this day) wasn't sure what had inspired Wilkin to pontificate before his string of Tavern stouts that day, but it had left an indelible impression upon his young mind.

For an Englishman to stand out in England was to stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the world—sensible patriotism would stand for no less. Yet for the sake of logical argument, Watson would be ready and willing to argue in the court of the plaintiff's choice if his opinion about Sherlock Holmes was skewed against the side of caution.

"Bah!"

Watson did not move from his newspaper. On the other side of the translucent pages he could see the lamp-lit silhouette of his closest friend scowling over his breakfast plate. Or to be more truthful, he could see the diaphanous and murky lamp-lit silhouette of his closest friend smoking his third pipe of the morning at the breakfast table, wrapped in a grey fog as thick as a Red Indian's buffalo robe. It was a very good reason for keeping the newspaper up as a wall—the one-man manufactory of London Fog had been producing copious amounts of visual obscurity from his single chimney-pipe since five o'clock that morning.

_Clink-clink_ as a fork scraped over a rather nice example of everyday china.

"_Mrs. Hudson!"_

Watson resolutely stayed in the safest spot that was 221B Baker Street—which was to say at this very spot, comfortably nestled between a wall of reality and ignorance (the ignorance being on his side of the _Times_). As long as he was there, he could read the pink pages.

_**Clink!**_

"Ms. Hudson! Am I to understand that you are still paying good silver into the ownership shares of your poulterer's business?"

Watson let his eyes drift downward to a small but _almost_ interesting report of spring rains and their inevitable effects upon the canals.

Once in a great while (somewhere between a good year for Comet Wine and a Blue Moon with a viewing date that ended with a square root), Holmes actually did bother about something that was an infinitesimal and insignificant detail. Rarely did Watson agree with him, thinking that details were the "miniscua fascinatium" of the world, to quote a low-marking classmate in Latin. Percy's ability to spin nice-sounding pseudo-Latin aside, it was a pity Watson's brain-attic had been permanently altered against his personal wishes. Not being in total grasp of precise and historically accurate language at this address was a guaranteed disaster if not ripe for humiliation.

Mrs. Hudson arrived, which unfortunately meant the door opened; this simple example of physics created a small but powerful cyclone of air which sent a large portion of the Tobacco Fog over the top of Watson's newspaper and swirling into the precious space between his reading and his eyes. Watson held his breath barely in time, and squinted at another headline regarding news that was every bit as stale as his rooms' airs. On the other side of the newspaper, Holmes was scolding Mrs. Hudson for continuing her contract with her current poulterer, for this was the third time this month he had received a double-yolked egg with his breakfast, and that was a clear sign the poulterer was flooding his pens with very young birds; what was he doing with Mrs. Hudson's rented flock? Surely they weren't going to stay adolescents forever.

Since the air was already ruined, Watson turned a page but kept the pages as erect as Hadrian's Wall. Mrs. Hudson was explaining to her lodger that there must be some mistake for she had specifically rented a flock that had been born in an artificial incubator six months previous. Holmes countered that the odds of getting a double-yolked egg were only 1:1000 and only very young birds were the traditional layers. She should check into the age of her flock the next time she sent for the week's eggs.

"Excitable woman," Holmes grumbled to the door. Normally he waited until the door ceased to vibrate upon its hinges before he said anything—he felt it rude. Not unlike talking over someone in a conversation.

"You do know anyone else would be pleased to get a double-yolked egg in their breakfast." Watson said evenly. "It's supposed to be good luck."

"Stuff and nonsense." Holmes snorted. "Two is traditionally an infelicitous number, and has been so since the most ancient of days."

Watson remembered it was considered the first female number, remembered again Holmes' disputatious opinion of the opposite sex, and kept his mouth shut, barely.

"Ah, good." He said dryly. "The fog is expected to lift with the tide today. I should let ours out to join the rest of its friends." He rose and cracked the window open, for at this point his personal oxygen supply had gotten thin. With open relief he breathed in a wave of chilly and sooty London air.

"Another blow to the enterprising criminal." Holmes grumbled. "They should take wise use of the fog before it leaves." Holmes would always say crime was more interesting than breathing, and his choice of strong shag only proved it.

"You may say so, but I am planning to go to the chemist's in less than an hour."

Among Holmes' many (one might argue limitless) repertoire of talents included a skill in creating spontaneous sounds of disdain or contempt or scorn that was literally untranslatable by any alphabet or phonetic code known to Western Man. This latest example was strangled between a Gallic huff and a barbaric alveolar trilling whoop Watson had once heard in Cardiff just before the police broke up the gathering with great haste and prejudice.

"The notion of anyone accosting you, my dear fellow?" Holmes lifted a finger with great admonishment into the rapidly-thinning air as he bothered to explain himself: "Perhaps at one time, when you were a new resident and your health was still limited, but that was before you regained your strength and managed to comport yourself in a few public altercations with your fifteen-pound medical bag—which you will naturally take with you to the chemist."

Watson had to laugh. "You make it sound as though I look for trouble, Holmes."

"You wouldn't waste time looking for trouble, Watson. You wisely stay alert for it. Which is simply common sense. Trouble is our profession, and as a good professional, you let the client come to you."

Watson was about to say something clever, but with the melting fog he could see bits and pieces of the street: A growler had stopped.

"That looks like Gregson," he said in surprise. "Why a growler? With him it's usually his own two feet."

"Possibly because a cab is marginally safer when the streets are so thick?" Holmes suggested. "We shall see soon enough! What did I just say? Trouble—or at least the troubled—are coming to us."

* * *

Gregson's face was rosy from the streets. This made his tow hair look brighter than ever when he pulled off his hat and sniffed the still-lingering thick air as though he liked it. Possibly he did. For a man of refined taste and excellent self-education, he liked the cheapest of tobaccos and tea brewed strongly enough to choke most drinkers. In concession to the early hour he accepted a cup of their brew and cradled the tiny vessel in his large hands as he sipped. Holmes of course did not ask him what his reasons were for the visit—very rarely did he ever bother with such a wasteful activity.

Gregson did not explain himself at first, which was against his usual behaviour. Watson had his notebook ready but kept silent, busily writing away as if that had been his activity all morning. He was recording his impressions of the day, the morning, time, London's weather and even Holmes' adventures with the smoke.

He surreptitiously noted their guest as Gregson chatted in an outwardly aimless manner to Holmes (who was responding in kind). Well, Gregson was catching Holmes up on the latest news between here and the nearest three prisons.

"...but can you believe they didn't know the address was to Broadmoor!"

Holmes' inky brows took flight for the dome of his head. It was rare when a policeman surprised him, and Watson knew he treasured those moments. Unlike Lestrade, Gregson was usually quite good at delighting Holmes with the unknown.

"That is indeed unusual, Gregson." He murmured. "But a man of Sir James' calibre may not have cause to know the address of our most illustrious madhouse?"

Gregson shuddered, which for him was an unusual display. "I'm not surprised you didn't know about it, Mr. Holmes." He said without his usual smugness or contempt. Gregson was for once, neither condescending to Holmes, nor worshipful. He was annoyed about a perceived crime. "So many people did their best to keep the word from getting out. I suppose they thought it would create a scandal where there was none."

"I hardly agree that it would be scandalous to employ a madman in productive and absorbing work." Holmes turned to Watson. "Watson, were you at all aware that one of the contributors to our latest addition to the shelf was a madman incarcerated for murdering an Englishman right here in London?"

Watson took in the sight of Holmes' latest of proud possessions, _the_ _Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, 1884_. Holmes had pulled strings to purchase one of the first off the press. The book had been keeping him out of his black moods since its arrival on the First of February (being the same day the publish was released, it was literally 'hot off the press' and still smelt of the printer's. Holmes was of course interested in the _outre_, and had been laughing with schoolboy delight at unusual treasures of the English language such as aeipathy (a frequent cause for crime), or addubitation (Holmes' favourite noun for Scotland Yard), or words that were simply delightful because who would think to create them (acnestis)?

"Minor will never see life outside Broadmoor," Gregson told them soberly. "He shot a good man dead; father of six children with another on the way. All because he thought the Irish were out to get him because he branded one as a deserter during their American Civil War."

"I beg your pardon," Watson exclaimed. "But I believe I recall this case. It happened in the '70's, did it not?"

"That it did, doctor." Gregson cracked a thin smile. "'72, right over in Lambeth-" He pointed in the proper direction. "Bloody enough business...I can't imagine how any army would make a doctor mutilate a man for life with a hot brand to the face, but that was how they dealt with traitors...rough sort." Gregson ran his fingers around his teacup. "The branding drove him mad, and his being of a religiously fervent family, he didn't handle any of it very well. As long as he's in Broadmoor with his books and his papers, he's safe enough and the world is safe too. It just staggers my mind that when he volunteered to contribute to the Dictionary, no one thought to ask about his background!"

"I would posit the quality of his entries were enough to impress them to the point that they would not ask such rude questions." Holmes murmured.

"And that could be the right of it. I should ask Penney."

"Penney?"

"One of the guards."

"Ah."

"But I digress and I apologise." Gregson abruptly looked tired and quite old. His broad face sagged with an expression that Watson was slowly recognising as his outward struggle with an old problem. "I came for an unrelated case."

Gregson never said he was sorry or admitted to a mistake unless half of London was at risk of dissolution. Watson could see how Holmes' face went blank—an excellent way of keeping composure—and hoped he was doing as well.

"Perhaps if you explained?" Holmes prodded.

"Oh, I can do better than that." Gregson grumbled. "I can show you."

* * *

**Scotland Yard, Lestrade's Office:**

Case of George Mason, former PC, Surrey. Death concluded as irrefutable suicide. Cause of suicide: Depression from death of wife, childbed fever.

Case of Nigel Usbourn, retired Police Constable, current address: Twelve High Street, Krythe (formerly Exeter). Strain upon the heart. Not suicide; not foul play.

Case of the Brothers Dew, formerly Anglesey Constabulary, murder by person or persons unknown, or he'd eat his warrant card with mint sauce.

Lestrade was unhappy enough at his day's imprisonment upon the desk, and matters hadn't sweetened to learn the first two cases had reached their natural conclusion in court at the same time he was still sharpening pencils. The Dew Brothers...well...he just had a feeling that even a blind, deaf and dumb jury would find the evidence in support of an unknown killer as opposed to two young and previously affectionate brothers, orphans, murdering each other with axe and adze. They were volunteers for the RSPCA, for heaven's sake! Why would they kill each other when rescued dogs and themselves were all they had in the world?

A full day of work at the desk. Two cases closed without his input; one last case on the verge. He hated that they all involved his fellow police. It wasn't an easy job and some days were much harder than others... He hoped Mason's surviving kin could bury him at least alongside his wife and child and not against the fence or by the road or in the Potter's Field or in any other show of disrespect to a good man taken by the undertow of life. Brother Jerome had been working hard to get suicides recognised as victims driven out of reason by their own grief. Lestrade knew he was having some successes, but Surrey was a long road from London. It was hard enough to convince some people that the mad deserved the full burial rights of the sane; saying suicides were mad only solved part of the problem.

Lestrade tried not to gnash his teeth at this old chestnut, and sharpened a new pencil.

Usbourn, well, clearly dead of natural causes, but Lestrade knew why his death-particulars had come to his desk. It was the same reason why he'd gotten Mason's and the Dews' particulars.

The Home Office had to make absolutely sure that the deaths of their own men would never be mistaken for murder. Dear God, but he hated that last-minute paranoia that was so necessary.

Lestrade glared again at the neat little stack at his desk. Solves to the left, unsolved to the right, and inches upon inches more cases to go. All very tidy unless you recalled the plain and simple fact that he'd been called in to close a most particular case. ONE case and he'd been blocked from its particulars before he'd gotten to the door of his own office! Theirs is not to reason why...theirs is but to do and die...

"_It's been taken care of," the poor sot at the front desk recited dutifully without making full eye contact with Lestrade. "You've been asked to look over the cases left on your desk."_

Only another officer of equal or higher rank (uniformed and plainclothed) would walk into another man's office and leave anything on his desk. Lestrade knew from the lack of identity this was a discreet motion from the higher-ups at the Home Office. And the Home Office hardly ever paid attention to small, insignificant little him unless there was a general paranoia...or the Foreign Office was stirring things up again... That last bit might be the striker; Browne's work up until the moment of his murder was hammering through some frightening channels.

_Tripledie_, but he did hate the days when the Home Office and the Foreign Office were actually speaking to each other.

Lestrade rested at his desk, chin pressed firmly into his right palm as he sat and thought. Below his palm his elbow was fast falling asleep against the hard pad of blotting paper and scattered quires of writing-paper.

A sensible man would stay sensible and accept the fact that others had been granted the right and honour of seeing to Browne's remains.

Lestrade wondered darkly if there was a point to claiming sense and sensibility. He could certainly claim all he wanted...but not within earshot of Gregson!

* * *

**Baker Street**:

"Holmes."

Holmes leaned to Watson's whisper very slightly. Watson knew his friend's ears were needle-sharp.

Watson chose his words with care. "Gregson appears to be stalling for time." The doctor tried. "When he was in our rooms he checked his watch twice on the pretext that he was weighing his timepiece against that of the London Bells sounding the quarter-hours."

"Very good, Watson." Holmes murmured, and turned to face him so no one else could see his face. "The good Inspector is indeed playing for time, which means this could be an unusually delicate case...or perhaps there is more to this than meets our eye." His grey eyes twinkled at the hope.

Gregson's euphoria lasted only as long as it took for the three to pile into the police cab; the instant the wheels turned the big man's demeanor changed to something cold and withdrawn, not unlike a lobster withdrawing into a den. Watson was well accustomed to Gregson's two moods of cold and bright, but he couldn't remember seeing the change from one to the other so dramatically.

If Holmes had seen it, he said nothing in observation.

The accompanying Constable with Gregson happened to be the driver, and Gregson glanced upward even though it was unlikely they would be overheard before he started talking.

"Browne was a good man. He was of solid country stock, which is the sort the Office prefers in their recruits. He never left London once he arrived, and he rose in the ranks traditionally, on the merit of his own work." Something in his own words made Gregson twitch, and he tucked his gloved hands deep within his arms for warmth. "No family to speak of, and all his friends wear the blue. He started on our side but transferred to the Rail Police after a few years and found his element. Good memory and good way of finding answers. He was a blunt, no-nonsense fellow and the men liked to work with him for he was honest and never let any of his Constables forget their own credit on a job. Most of his men trained up in short order."

"It is odd to think of a Rail Policeman underground." Holmes spoke for Watson's thoughts. "I was under the impression that the departments never venture into another's range."

"You're right; we can't go outside our territory unless it's already been permitted in the case, but Browne was searching a section of underground that had been developed by Farmer George for one of the country's first sections of rail. By default the area was still under the RP, even though no one really knew where it was or where it went to—everyone thought their maps were accurate," he said hastily, "But no one's had cause to test the worth of those maps in dog's years. When he went missing, we all learnt our maps were no better than tinder for the hard-ups!"

"And yet his body was found." Watson supplied.

"Yes...weeks upon weeks later." Gregson growled.

"We read the newspaper accounts," Holmes noted dryly. "Perhaps your version of events would be useful?"

Gregson snorted at the thought of a useful press. "Browne went underground with Lestrade and Tubberman in an investigation of the land-slip that affected the Hammersmith Wreck during Christmas. You'll recall that accident I'm sure-" He smiled thinly as Watson grimaced, caught up in temporary memories of setting broken bones on an icy night. "He felt the land-slip was engineered by human hands in order to provide a distraction for Jethro Quimper's escape."

"That is a bold theory," Holmes noted evenly. "Obviously he felt he could prove his beliefs?"

"He believed in it enough to swallow his pride and talk to Lestrade." Gregson retorted. "Browne was not known for making mistakes. I'll stand by that assessment."

"And Lestrade was not brought into the case now that his comrade is found?"

Leave it to Holmes to ask the questions no one else possessed the nerve for uttering. Watson wondered if his friend's self-avowed ignorance of so many things was a useful weapon of manipulation. Before the sensitivity of the query, Gregson flushed dark as a rose, his jaw tightening to lines better suited to a perch of granite.

"Lestrade has been called to another case," Gregson managed to say with an obvious invocation of self-control. "Would he have the time I'm sure he wouldn't hesitate to join this one."

How...odd. Watson wanted desperately to look at Holmes at that moment, but Holmes' face wore inscrutable lines. The doctor decided to invoke the better portion of his patience and wait and see for what would happen next.

* * *

**St. John's Hospital Morgue, leased by Scotland Yard: **

As Gregson busied himself with signing in permission forms to go into the Morgue his guests wandered around the miniscule front office. It served double duty as a waiting room as well and Watson grudgingly admired the stack of reading material on the single shelf.

"I see the Methodists have been here." He smiled to Holmes.

"Ah." Holmes smiled. "But you deduce only partially, my good Watson. I can also see that Dr. Roanoke has been here as well."

"Why Roanoke?" Watson recalled the weathered old surgeon by reputation more than personal experience.

Holmes pointed to a tiny Children's Bible on the shelf. "His personal touch," he explained. "He makes a point of leaving the smallest of Bibles about because in his own words, people want to read words of comfort, and if the have to struggle to read tiny print it takes their mind somewhat off their grief."

Watson blinked. "He sounds like a clever old fellow."

"I believe the other physicians refer to him as, 'that salty old fossil.'" Holmes mused.

"...Lestrade?"

Both men turned their heads, but Gregson's continued conversation had been with the clerk, not with themselves. The clerk shook his head, no, and Gregson almost pressed the tip of his pencil through the book-paper.

Then with an effort, the big Yarder slapped his pencil down in a show of satisfaction. "There you are, gents! Be sure to keep your coats buttoned-up. It's chilly as Dante's Lake."

_"He does like to show off his education."_ Watson murmured under his breath.

_"Possibly. But you have to agree his analogy will never be more apt than a frozen lake peopled with dead sinners."_

* * *

The Dead were never far away. Watson had seen plenty of them (so he'd thought) as a medical student and then acres of the dead in his short Indian term. Afghanistan might have been the bloodiest of all experiences, but that had been war.

Here the dead were unified in all ages, all sizes, and all states. They rested between icy slabs and wash-faded sheets that granted them the privacy of anonymity. Watson had not been in this particular depository before; he counted twenty slabs in ranks of four and rows of five. A single pinch-faced young man with thin red hair and a note-book walked slowly and silently from slab to slab, writing something every time he stopped. He was absorbed in his work, but Watson had a powerful sense that every thing they did, the man would note and record. The one glance-up of dark brown eyes had been like getting the glance off a large, wild animal at the zoo.

Watson suddenly felt like an intruder, for their very act of living was a loud, rude presence against the silent contemplation of the room's occupants.

But Gregson led them past the tables of silent sheeted corpses and into a small room that was ferociously cold in comparison to the normal chill of the vault. Their breaths blew great white clouds in the air; the wall-lamps steamed and hissed like sullen salamanders. Only two slabs were in this space, and one was empty. The other slab was occupied but great care had been made in covering every inch of a skeleton so that nothing could be seen by the naked eye. The luxury of three lamps burned on the walls and the harshness of the illumination against the white walls took on a tone of stern judgment.

"The main room's for the decedents found during the night. Sometimes we can identify them quick...sometimes not. And if there's something...of a confidential nature," Gregson said carefully, "we bring them here."

"Wise." Holmes offered. He was down to the bare minimum of speech; speaking only when he must, to show he had heard what was being said. Watson could practically see his brain working like a train ahead of schedule.

"As is common knowledge for this case, Lestrade was called to assist Mr. Browne of the RP." Gregson still looked sorry to say this much. "Accompanying the men was PC Tubberman, who was operating as a spy for the London Families without our knowledge."

"Tell me," Holmes interrupted with a shred of impatience at what he felt was redundant language. "Do you have _known_ operators within the Families?"

Gregson stared at Holmes, thunderstruck. A long minute ticked through their watches in the silent room before the big man could collect his voice.

"There are always unknown operators," he said at last. "But I would like to say that our enemies say the same about ours."

"I see. Continue."

Gregson shook himself. "Browne had found an old sluice-gate erected to control the flow of water and keep the land above the tracks drained; open the gate and water will come out, thaw the upper earth, and soften the surface just enough to pull the rails out of true in that one spot. Very well, he had his proof and was showing it to Lestrade..." Gregson stopped and took a deep breath. "In the midst of showing this to Lestrade, Tubberman got behind the men and opened the gate and flooded the chamber after killing Browne and pushing Lestrade into the channel. He admitted that he only pushed Lestrade into the cut 'so the water would do the killing for him.'" He sniffed. "What a dunce!" He decreed. "Any crawler in the gutter would have known better! But Lestrade got out and Tubberman was pegged as rotten, and everything was finished up except for the fact that we couldn't find Browne's remains." Gregson hesitated, but finally pulled out his cigarette-case. "About a week after the rescue, we received a message from the Home Office to do what we could to find Mr. Browne."

Holmes had been studying the folds of the sheet-wrapped body with his usual narrow-focused glare. Watson saw him stop his search right above the dark ribs and look up. His expression was one of the strangest the doctor had ever seen on his friend.

It was an expression Watson did not recognise. For one of the few times in his acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes, Watson did not have a single idea as to what his friend was thinking.

"Of course you would wish to find him anyway."

"Well, of course!" Gregson exploded, but his pale face turned red with the aftershock of embarrassment. "He was one of us! Leaving him down in the ground like so much rubbish—no one wanted that! Lestrade least of all! But the wire was still hot from delivery when we get _another_ wire from the Home Office, and this one is a cancellation of the first wire. To disregard for the proper measures are being taken in this case." Still angry, Gregson puffed. "We hated it. We all did. Browne was our man before he was transferred to the RP, so both sides wanted to do something. It was really up to his comrades; he didn't have family to speak up for him, and all of his friends were inside the ranks."

"Who found him?"

"One of the old tunnel-rats who does occasional work for us. Man by the name of Carp. He and his sons can get just about anywhere under the earth, but he wouldn't let his lads go in with him—too dangerous, he said. That's what took up so much time. Carp insisted on going alone with nothing more than a rope tether and a lamp and a bucket of white paint to mark his way; started in searching the passageways from where they went in. Finally Carp decided it was worth the risk and went to the spot where Lestrade had dug himself out of the ballast." He stopped and sniffed again, as if clawing oneself out of a makeshift grave was a negligible deed. "Should have done that in the first place, but you can't tell a Superintendent what to do.

"You can ask Lestrade about if if you want," Gregson added maliciously.

"An excellent suggestion," Holmes had not mastered the riposte for nothing.

Gregson stopped and took a deep breath. "We're allowed to smoke in here," he admitted. "And you might want to."

Watson and Holmes traded glances, knowing what that meant. They both shook their heads.

"You'll not mind if I do. This will be the third time I've been down here today." Gregson paused and lit up a cigarillo that made him relax almost instantly. With his scent-masking weapon between his lips, he gently tugged the sheet off the slab. Grains of ice cracked and broke the stiff linen canvas free.

"This, we believe, is Sgt. Browne of the Railroad Police." Gregson looked tired as he said it. "His clothing and personal effects are here." He nodded at a sadly small box from which emanated a scent of earth and decay.

It was a skeleton, and not much else. Rats had taken control of the body and the bones were frequently gnawed. Even the tendons were chewed.

"What do you think, Watson?" Holmes asked quietly.

Watson took a deep breath and was glad for his gloves. "I see the skeleton of an adult male...his skeletal formation suggests he is at least in his forties, perhaps older. The single blow to the back of the head is the immediate cause of death-" He went behind the shattered skull and gently picked up one of the broken pieces. It was light as thin pottery. The rats had made short work of the contents inside. Gruesome, but it did make his examination easier. "The lower left rib is peculiar. It was shattered once, was it not?"

"Yes." Gregson looked pleased at the input.

"Do you have a photograph or an image of Mr. Browne, Inspector?"

Gregson looked puzzled but complied, tugging a small square out of his pocket. It was a photo for records: Browne younger, smart in his uniform with his helmet neatly tucked beneath his arm and his white gloves stacked cleanly over the helmet.

Watson examined the photograph very hard in silence, then gave the same attention to the skeleton.

"This is your colleague, Mr. Gregson. I would stake my reputation on it."

Gregson swallowed hard. "You can tell by looking at the skull?"

"Tell me, Inspector...can you stand in a room and know what the walls look like without the curtains getting in the way?"

"Well of course!"

"The way I see the dead is not so different." Watson was oddly pleased as he handed the photo back. Holmes was busy with his own examination, but Watson knew every inflection had been written inside his brain for later dissection.

"If I may," the detective said at last, "you do not seem surprised at the confirmation. What then, brings you to this case if his identity was satisfied?"

Gregson took a deep breath and rocked back and forth on his heels with his hands at his hips—a mannerism Watson used to associate with Lestrade until he realised _all_ the former plainclothes police had the habit when they were standing still for. It must have been a way of shifting their weight in the monstrous boots cladding their feet. He chewed nervously around his thin cigarillo, and kept looking down at the shrouded bones.

"I am convinced. That's not quite the problem, you see." Gregson worried at his tobacco again. "Browne had a map. Most of his mortal remains are gone." The big man nodded icily to the shroud again, "But rats are more peculiar in habit than you might think. They might like the taste of a map, but they wouldn't have been able to eat it all up." He hesitated and shook his head as if angry. "There would have been bits of paper, even small bits to go by. The clothing was perfectly intact upon the body and the map was supposed to have been secreted inside his clothing."

"Browne has been found, but where is his map?" Holmes filled in.

"The map may be the reason why he was killed." Gregson said darkly. "It was supposedly an intricate thing, charting out three of the Lost Rivers. Tubberman confessed he killed for the map, but also that he couldn't find it. Browne did something to the map before he was killed."

Holmes' face did not change, but Watson felt a thrill of awe.

"And there is no doubt the map is gone instead of eaten by rats or lost in the tunnel?" The doctor pressed.

"A good map has a high quality of rag content." Gregson studied his cigar. "A map like the one described...why would anyone spend a fortune on detail and information only to put it on cheap paper? You may as well print a pound note on typing paper. On top of everything else, the map was meant to be used underground. Underground's a dirty, wet place in the best of times. The map needs to be able to survive that sort of visit."

Holmes almost smiled at Gregson. "Excellent work as always, Gregson." He praised, which frankly shocked the big man.

"Just common sense." Gregson muttered, awkward in his uncertainty.

Holmes tapped his long fingers inside his palms, the leather whispering with the speed of phantom trains. "I have another appointment that I must keep, but I would like permission to see the remains one last time before internment. Would you be so kind as to warn me?"

"Of course." Gregson was startled, possibly at the strangeness of Holmes' question. Watson was just as startled for the same reason. Holmes had made many a queer question but this was the first time the doctor could remember his asking to return to a body of evidence?

"Well!" Holmes exclaimed and thrust his hands deep in his pockets against the cold. By this point the steam rolled off their bodies in white vapours. "Watson, we should leave the Yard to their work. Gregson, we shall be in contact at the earliest opportunity."

Watson kept quiet until they were safely into the first whistled-up cab. "Holmes, what did you see back there?" He wanted to know. The curiosity was overwhelmingly powerful.

Holmes leaned back and tucked his chin above his laced fingers. "Gregson was surprised at _you_, dear fellow." He observed with a quick upward twitch of his lips. "Your talent for recognising the face the skull once wore is hardly commonplace."

Watson growled; his temper was roused at the day. "It is hardly something to discuss in polite company." He muttered. "I'm just surprised Gregson didn't know." He took a deep breath. "I confessed I told Lestrade some time ago."

"You are surprised that Gregson does not know something that Lestrade knows?" Holmes tilted his head to one side. "The two keep close counsel but not to each other."

"A shame they cannot work together." Watson grumbled. "Together they could be a working whole with fewer mistakes."

"Were they to help each other in any obvious way, it would raise the question of favouritism, nepotism, and possibly a matter of a higher talent serving a weaker one and that would lead to speculation that the two are working outside the bounds of the law. They are naturally hesitant to give each other aid for many reasons, and an Englishman's sense of honour is quite the most compelling."

"Pity." Watson summed it up. He thought of Gregson's simple conclusions on the missing map and could find no fault in the logic. Gregson had to be right; such a map wouldn't be all detailing if it wasn't also meant to be used.

Holmes grunted. They watched London pass by for some miles. Holmes cracked his pocket-lamp and was unable to take notes in his lap so his temper was at risk.

"What did Lestrade say when you told him you could recognise a skeleton?"

"He was not at all envious." Watson had no trouble remembering that moment.

Holmes chuckled from the lowest depths of this throat. "He has a tendency to speak in impulse; he will live to rue that tendency."

"He did speak honestly." Watson argued reluctantly. "We both agreed it was not a talent we would have wished for upon ourselves."

He still flinched at the circumstances that brought about that conversation, and at the time Lestrade's honest feelings about Watson's ability to see the living superimposed over the skulls of the dead was eerily close to his own feelings.

Holmes momentarily looked thoughtful, as if he couldn't understand an unwanted talent that would be useful in solving crime.

"Quite a murky and aerumnous2 case," the Detective commented. Watson felt a bloom of warmth in his chest. Holmes was feeling good and that meant they were on another journey into the unknown.

* * *

2Adj. Full of trouble. Holmes is still reading the OED.


	3. Chapter 3

_**The Lancashire-Rose:**_

Clea Lestrade had kept her morning busy and fulfilling with meeting the customers and overseeing to the food distribution.

That was before Old Mr. Peavensey came in with a canary perched inside his hat and asked for a slice of seed cake to go with his tea.

Once she'd recovered from the shock of seeing a one-winged bird hop down from the old man's crown to nest in the crook between his neck and collar, Clea was charmed.

"Last week it was a bird in with your pocket-handkerchief, wasn't it?"

The old fellow sniffed cheerfully, and eyes bright and black as a bird's gleamed as he pinched up a piece of cake thick with poppyseeds. "Collar, hat, pocket...still better than having two in the bush!"

Clea laughed and started to go, but found herself squinting curiously at the passenger. "My word, that is a canary?"

"That he is."

"I thought they were all yellows."

"Aha," Mr. Peavensey held out a finger and the little bird hopped upon the thick perch, its one good wing partially spread for balance. "I ran out of money for my usual mixture of seeds, and had to resort to another. Since I changed, he molted with this new tint. I wonder if it is the red pepper seed."

"Oh, my." Clea was amazed. She extended her hand and the little fellow happily made the leap from his owner to her palm. It pecked lightly at a bit of seed and watched her with one bright eye, then another, as Mr. Peavensey explained how his formulae in food had been accidental, but there was no doubt the diet benefited his little charges.

"...for I did my research on wild hot peppers, and they are spread by _birds_! No mammals that I could find for they find the fruits far too hot and disagreeable!"

"I can imagine. I couldn't bite down on a hot pepper to save my life." Clea hated to let the little bird go, but she lowered her hand and he took the hint, hopping back to the perch of the wool-clad shoulder.

"Doesn't he just glow with health?"

"He does indeed glow." Clea agreed. On top of his brilliant yellow feathers the canary had the faintest, most delicate burnishing of apricot and salmon. He was beautiful, and she could see how the shades might turn to a deeper marigold with time.

"All because I couldn't afford enough of his usual seeds." Mr. Peavensey pinched up a bit of cake for himself and ate it with all due bird-like attention. "This summer the sun will make him shine."

"Summer isn't so far away," Clea smiled and hoped she was telling the truth.

"He deserves the best, don't you Jacky?"

The bird didn't chirp or tweet, but he looked at Mr. Peavensey, and that made Clea laugh.

She returned to the wall by the kitchen and watched her patrons with a smile. Mr. Peavensey was hardly a newcomer, but he was so old and frail there was no telling when he would arrive. Two policemen still in uniform (pausing to eat on their way home or to one of their tiny little barracks-houses), an Irishman with the typical Irish interest in bread and butter and tea, a brute of a man who made even Cheathams look average was digging into his buttered potatoes with great enthusiasm. Four men had just left.

Not a bad showing for this late in the day; Clea had been a little frightened for her odds today for meatless meals weren't always popular with men and she did not yet have a separate eating-room for women. But they did have plenty of bread and milk and if it was fresh and hot it would be taken with gusto. Clea's upbringing in Lancashire had given her a slightly overinflated sense of the importance of meat at meals; she was still learning that a Londoner measured their poverty by how little they had bread, not meat.

"...horrible enough," one of the Bobbies was saying. Clea didn't know them yet—they were relative newcomers and her shop was close enough to the trains that some days she had no-one but strangers.

"Eh, if it isn't one funeral 'tis another." His mate commiserated with a large wedge of soft potato-bread and a tea milky enough to pass for mud. "Clarke, Perry, old French..."

"Least they died of natural causes."

"And what's unnatural death when you think about it? Animals kill each other all the time in Nature."

"Ugh, you're right, but you also know what I mean."

Clea was reluctant to listen, but she was just as reluctant to walk away.

"You'll never convince me the Dew Boys killed each other."

"No, nor me."

"Why'd anyone think they'd do that? Makes no sense!"

"Marks said it looked like they'd killed each other at first look. An' with the suicides going up the way they are, they probbly just assumed."

"That's another thing-"

"Hsht. Th' little mite's coming back."

Clea had to smile as the big policemen piped down least they offend the delicate ears of the serving-girl—and Violet had heard far worse when she was half their size. They smiled and thanked her for the fresh tea, said no to seconds, and let her walk off with a smile.

* * *

_**Morgue:**_

Gregson came as soon as the note hit his desk; he growled and left a swelling sea of unfinished work behind and hurried back to the bloody morgue. The clerk nodded wearily as he stamped inside, and Gregson paused to check the signature book. G. Lestrade looked back at him in his rival's girlishly neat hand. Gregson grumbled again (it was manlier than moaning), put a hasty chop below Lestrade's and vanished into one of his least favourite places on earth.

The shift had switched and the ginger-haired man had been replaced by another as equally dour and silent as himself. Gregson grumbled; his hands were already aching and he strode inside the back room.

Lestrade never looked up. He was staring down at the skeleton with what had to have been the oddest expression Gregson had ever seen on another human.

Gregson was a smart man, but there were times when his brains took a back-seat and his trustworthy instincts took over. The flesh on the backs of his hands prickled and it wasn't from his cold allergy. He sensed something important was resting just under the surface of this moment.

Lestrade was still studying Browne's ruined skull.

Lestrade had worked through the tragedy of the _Princess Alice_—and even uncovered a murder case or two from it, much to Gregson's eternal jealousy. He'd encountered some things that even the social protesters wouldn't believe out of horror, and no one was likely to forget the awful time he fell into a murder pit below a baby farm. He wouldn't be taken aback by the dead.

Gregson had often spent a lot of time within his head, riddling out the annoying bits and pieces that summed up Lestrade (know thy only rival for promotion, after all). He'd come to the conclusion years ago that Lestrade's head was a scary mess.

"Penny for your thoughts, Lestrade."

Even Gregson wouldn't mock a man in the presence of the dead—especially a dead professional.

"You'd be getting change back." Lestrade said quietly.

Gregson stepped closer and pulled out his last two cigarettes. Even though Lestrade had made this mistake before, he still accepted the peace offering. They smoked quietly in the brittle lamp-light.

"Someone wanted me on this case, but someone else pulled me off." The small man said at last.

"Not hard to see why, Lestrade. You're French." Lestrade did not quite groan. "Now hear me out," Gregson lifted his hands in a placating manner. "You know as well as anyone that as far as the Foreign Office goes, you're not English enough."

"Being born on English soil has nothing to do with it." Lestrade growled.

"Well, it would help if you could prove it..."

"Forget it, then. I'm not even sure which island it was."

"Island? I'll ask you that latter. Point is, the Foreign Office has been stirring the pots for the Holmes office _and_ the War Office lately. There's trouble coming in from Germany and from France and there are too many spies on both sides. Someone's quite upset and you know how those geniuses act."

"I didn't think they acted." Lestrade snarled. "I thought they just threw things against the nearest wall and wrote down the bits that stuck."

"Might be. It makes more sense than some of the things we've seen them do. But this might not be about you, so much as Browne himself. He was dipping his toes into a mess that involved organised crime in two countries."

"And one of the countries happens to be France." Lestrade filled in wearily.

"It's best that you are out of this case, Ratty. As long as you'd be in it, people would be asking about your loyalties. They asked it before, and they'll ask it again."

Lestrade winced, cut to the bone, but didn't argue. Gregson generally tried not to go for easy targets and Lestrade's family was the easiest target of all.

"Look on the bright side," Gregson added in such sarcastic tones that it pulled Lestrade out of his own thoughts long enough to stare at him. "You're career's set as long as we've got untouchable cases."

"All I have to do is survive solving them." Lestrade shot back.

"If Whicher can fall, any of us can. He was one of the best. No one's safe."

"No, you're right about that." Lestrade took another drag and came to some sort of decision. "He was dying."

"Who, Browne?"

"He was coughing up blood the day we went down. Old blood. Dried up clots. You know what that means."

Gregson swallowed. "I didn't know. I wonder if anyone knew?"

"I think this was going to be his Last Case." Lestrade swallowed too. "One last case before he died...he wanted it to be a good one."

Gregson was not sentimental, but it was hard not to choke up at the thought. The Last Case haunted every policeman.

"I'll mention that in the case." Gregson said at last. "Who knows, it might be helpful."

"Who knows?" Lestrade agreed. He tapped ash into the sand-dish and his face gradually changed as his thoughts took over.

"I'll let you know if I think of anything else." He promised at last.

"That'd be good." Gregson nodded cautiously.

Lestrade was barely aware of him now. His mind was falling to the undertow of something, something strong and powerful. Gregson remembered again that what he knew of Lestrade's inner thoughts was bloody terrifying.

The little man's free hand slipped down to his hanging watch. His thumb circled the smooth metal, over and over. He was still stroking the watch as he left.

Gregson did not leave with him. He covered Browne's bones with the sheet, wondering a few things.

Lestrade had thought of something in this room...and it had made him angry.

He thought he might know what it could be.

With Browne dead, Lestrade might feel the obligation to finish his case for him.

Gregson hoped he was wrong, but a leaden weight was sinking into his chest.

He was probably right. Lestrade was scared of a lot of things—dogs being the first three of them—and failure—but he wasn't afraid of the dead the way a lot of people were afraid.

Lestrade was superstitious about the unfinished business the dead could leave behind.

* * *

_**Lambeth Borough, Surreyside of London:**_

Watson would guess that the lodgings of a tunnel-rat with the name of Carp would be an example from Henry Mayhew's pages: Small, squalid, cramped like a human dovecote with other humans, in a disreputable part of London and surrounded by disease, sickly beings, rags and ragamuffins.

But the address Gregson had presented them had taken the cab to a part of Lambeth that if it was not stellar nor admirable, it was at least facing the open view of the Thames. Air blew about them in a long, steady wave and the streets were heavy with mud as a recent flood dwindled slowly away, leaving behind its dubious thanks in the form of silt and rubbish. Children as young as three were helping comb through the muck for anything useful, and a hard-eyed girl in her teens guarded a small pile of sorted-out bones, rags and scraps of metal with a heavy looking club.

"A place known for industry." Holmes observed without the least bit of irony.

"The human animal is defiant to a fault, Holmes, but it must be a special breed that can take the seasonal floods." Watson spoke softly, and shook his head. "The Thames is a giant of a river and there's no use fighting him."

Holmes was using his greater height to examine a possible path across the mud. "I've heard more than one resident of the borough claim the floods are the Thames revenge against man's actions upon his waters."

"I could believe it."

"Aha..." Holmes hooked his long arm into Watson's and drew him through a snake's-knot of navigation around and through and across clusters of people, pools of muck, two lean dogs, a broken trunk in the midst of being broken up for firewood, and a scatter of deadly-looking broken bottles. Even Watson's hardened medical eye was momentarily stunned at the sight of barefooted children running down the street without stopping. They ran over the glass without a pause or complaint which said much about the thickness of their soles.

"The human animal is defiant," Holmes mused without his usual contempt.

"That must be the place," Watson guessed at a long, low-awning shop front with four Dutch doors instead of windows. After a moment's thought, Watson saw the practicality: glass was precious and would have been stolen or broken, and he estimated the floods could easily get as high as the half-mark on the walls. Leave a door open during a flood and let the water flow out and there would be much less damage to the structure.

The flood was recent enough that the awning had not yet been cleaned, but he could see it was a sturdy beige canvas beneath the coat of silt, and white paint spelled out the painstaking words: DEALER. In concession to the illiterate customer, the same white paint had made a glyph of a long-whiskered carp. The effort was not bad at all, but Watson tsked at the idea of a snow-white carp.

"Did you notice the signature-book on the way to the Morgue?" Holmes asked as they picked their way to a higher portion of the street. They would have to get to the shop in a circuitous method if they wanted to avoid the street-muck.

"No," Watson could have kicked himself but the chiding cluck of Holmes' tongue was enough.

"Observations, Watson! No-one had signed in that I could recognise, but Gregson was asking the clerk if Lestrade had checked in to view the remains!"

"I remember when he said 'Lestrade' and how the clerk shook his head in the negative." Watson recalled. "At the time I was wondering who else would be interested in viewing the remains?"

"That would be hard enough to determine as only the signatures and times are recorded. Mr. Lestrade could have signed in to view the suspicious death of a Cambridge Marsh Eel and our information would have circumstantially presumed he had gone to view the bones of his old friend."

Watson nodded in absent agreement as a gust of brown fog blew from aronud the corner and rushed past them in a foul wind of street-litter and cinder. Holmes tucked his arm inside Watson's and the two made their way past a soupy atmosphere to the little address recorded in Gregson's blunt, confident and almost mechanically precise handwriting.

Gentlemen should never make an outward demonstration of their inner cogs and wheels, no matter how surprised they are. Surprise may be an honest emotion, but being surprised at someone or something is simply poor manners and bad breeding.

Watson prided himself on keeping his composure as they entered the shop. It was freshly-washed and humming with light and warmth. Although the walls were still wet from the flood and the resultant clean-up, they were drying quickly thanks to the use of the smallest stoves he had ever seen in his life. They were even smaller than the 'shepherd's stoves' of his childhood, where the whole lot could be folded up and carried off to the next pasture in a few minutes.

A young man perched over a freshly-washed desk, hair brutally held back with oil that left a shine like his cufflinks. They were his only outward vanity; his clothing fit in with the shop: well-worn and too-frequently washed to ever look smart. Watson was thinking that something was odd about the light in his hair, but the youth looked up to greet his visitors and a patch of piebald discolouration upon his neck showed itself. Behind his bifocals his eyes were dark blue-violet. He was a part-albino.

"Good afternoon, sirs. May I help you?"

Holmes had paused, taking in the shop's wares. In any other place in London this might be a seedy little rag-shop but the determined logic and order to the objects belied this casual identification. Table-ware rested in formation on one wall. Another, luggage. Bins of clean clothing sorted to men, women, and children were upon the third wall and the fourth wall was the counter-space itself. Neat trays of coins, jewellry, watch-chains and small, useful objects like hand-tools and watch-parts, odd keys and barber's equipment rested beneath the clerk's watchful gaze.

"I was assured that Mr. Carp would be at this address. I have come to speak with him regarding his work...my name is Sherlock Holmes and this is my colleague Dr. Watson."

"How do you do," Watson doffed his hat upon his cue. He didn't miss the boy's reaction. It was polite interest and nothing suspicious.

"I do well, sir, as I hope you do. Mr. Carp is my grandfather and out for the moment but he should return very soon." The last was said with a significant nod to the open Dutch Doors, letting in precious little light from the streets now that the sun had finally turned. "I am Leedy Carp and the shop is under my management. If you wish to make yourselves comfortable, I've no doubt you will not have long to wait."

Watson wondered why the boy had looked at the open door as if they would knew what the gesture meant. Holmes merely smiled and pulled off his gloves, asking if he might inspect the wares. The permission was granted easily.

The young man spoke with great politeness and precision; Watson liked him.

The two men wandered from shelf to shelf, musing at the goods. They were undoubtedly lost objects found, cleaned and in many cases repaired. Watson had prepared himself for a long wait and had mentally recorded his notes in the atmosphere for tonight's pencil. He was looking about for new small details when the door opened and the gentleman came in.

Watson realised two things at once:

Grandfather Carp had been very fitting when he painted a white carp as his sign. He was a pure albino.

Grandfather Carp was not Leedy's natural Grandfather. He was clearly from another race, but Watson was not sure what that race was just yet.

"Good afternoon, gentleman." The old fellow paused to take off his knitted cap. His hair was would be bushy were it not trimmed very short and was as snowy white as his skin. If Watson looked very hard, the hair was very lightly tinted yellow.

"Good afternoon." Holmes lifted the hat in his hand as a gesture of goodwill; "My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is my friend Dr. Watson. We have a common client in Scotland Yard, I believe."

"Scotland Yard? Of course." The old fellow leaned upon a cane and found a barrel-chair. "Leedy, would you find us some tea?"

"Already steeping, sir." The man smiled.

"Well of course." The old man chuckled. "Yes, Mr. Holmes. We do have Scotland Yard in common. What may I do for you?"

"I was told you were the inimitable gentleman who discovered the lost remains of Sgt. Brown, of the Rail Police."

"Ah." The fellow nodded. Watson could scarce believe the evidence of his eyes, but the frail old man was agreeing to his part in a demanding task. "That I was, but if I had been but five years younger! I would have found him much earlier. There would have been more to bury." He paused and made a sign of the cross across his chest.

"Would you mind telling us how you found him?"

"Little enough to tell." Carp began (Watson suspected from the expression on Leedy's face this was a well-practiced lie of modesty). The young man came over with a folding table and set it with a small tea service. "Thank you, lad." Leedy silently poured tea for them all and returned to his place at the counter just as a woman with four small children came in and began exploring the clothing-bins.

Watson held up his notebook. "Do you mind if I write this down?" He asked hopefully.

"Why not at all, but there isn't much to tell."

* * *

An hour later they were back on the street and Holmes was trying to whistle up a cab around peals of mirth.

"Would you like me to wind that for you, Holmes?" Watson chuckled even as he continued to shake sensation back into his numb writing-hand.

"Perhaps you should learn some ambidexterity?" Holmes strangled a note on the whistle and far away in the sea of humanity, a cab-driver lifted his crop in salute. Holmes managed to get a few more laughs out, but just as he was under control Watson held up his battered note-book and flipped the pages before his friend. The book was completely full of shorthand, and the last three pages had the tiny margins crowded with Watson's desperate attempt to finish the interview.

"Enough, Watson!" Holmes sputtered, and was no longer in control of himself. He was still laughing, doubled-up with his hands on his knees on the kerb as the cab pulled up.

"Baker Street!" Watson addressed for them both.

Holmes was back to normal once they sat down, and just in time. Chilly rain slapped the sides of the cab and they accepted the fact that their seats were not the driest.

"Remind me," Holmes took a breath of air, "to be warier of the courtesy of old men. What a fascinating specimen of humanity, Watson! I believe I could listen to him talk all day, every day for a month and he would still be as entertaining."

"Just as well." Watson looked at his notes ruefully. "Because for a while I thought that was to be our fate."

Holmes chuckled one last time, but his ribs ached. "What were your impressions of him?"

"It's rare to see a total albino, so I fear he thought I was rude, but I was trying to...to look through the curtain, to use my analogy to Gregson, and see the skull beneath."

"He is quite used to staring, I'm sure. But I wondered why would looked as though you were _facing_ a thorny problem." Holmes and his wordplay! Thank the fates his moods were rare; Watson could never keep up otherwise!

"Well! In a city as large as London, the odds are there must be from 200 to 300 albinos in it, but the gentleman and his 'grandson' are the first ones I've met here." He thought a bit. "I would surmise from the level of education they were brought up bookish. It's difficult for both of them to be outside with their fellow man. They speak as though they learned from books more than teachers. And the young man is not his natural grandson; Mr. Carp is an albino Negro, I believe. The young man is clearly of the Caucasian race."

"Excellent points, but they did not learn from books. Books are something that cannot survive a business within the flood-line below London Bridge! No books, no paper, nothing of that flimsy material against the waters. They are trained speakers, Watson. Inflection and proper words! They were house-servants at one time, and I would be interested to know who would have hired them, for their identical method of speaking is as unique as a fingerprint's whorls!"

Watson groaned and slapped his forehead. "You're right, Holmes! Cloth, silverware, pottery...even jewellry and china...but nothing by way of paper!"

"I really must make their acquaintance again." Holmes mused.

"Be sure you eat first." Watson was ferociously hungry as the interview had gone far longer than he'd anticipated. His stomach growled in agreement.

Holmes instantly struck the top of the cab with his stick and the driver pulled over to the side against a row of small taverns. "Thank you!" He tossed the fare plus a tip to the man.

"We're not going straight to Baker Street?"

"It did occur to me that our day may not be finished." Holmes admitted. "How do you feel about a quick meal?"

Watson had opened his mouth to ask wasn't that the reason for stopping, but held himself in check just in time. The tavern was The Malmsey Keg, a familiar one much habited by the police, and one policeman in particular.

"Doesn't Lestrade favour this place?"

"I would daresay, as I just saw him walking in."


	4. Chapter 4

_**Lancashire-Rose:**_

Clea was tallying up the ends of the day when an unexpected shadow crossed her desk. She was stunned to see her brother Andrew as the source.

Andrew was the brother she least favoured. As a woman she had visceral annoyance with a man who was more concerned with the mirror and comb than herself, but take away the popinjay and he was _still_ aggravating...and Cheathams were aggravating by nature. It took hard work and dedication for any particular Cheatham to stand out amongst the other Cheathams.

Clea had not seem much of Andrew since her wedding: A weekly note was the extent of his affection and she knew she was lucky to get that much; he lived within the narrow lines of his work along the canals and the Universe-sized world that was his social addictions. Most nights he was out at a ball or event, concert, play of (Heaven forbid) standing as seconds in a daft duel of honour. This was the closest she'd been to him in a fortnight. And wouldn't you know, he hadn't changed a jot since the wedding. Still the peacock, still red rose'd at the lapel; still everything _just so_ down to waxed moustache and oiled hair and cuffs starched to the whiteness of virgin snow. Of all her brothers, he was the 'smallest' meaning he had the least mass, but he was still one of the best fighters in a family of fighters.

Once upon a time, Andrew realised he would never have the superior bulk and mass of their father, so he bent his skill to the dirtier styles of combat mixed with the gentleman's singlestick and fencing. He was as lean and dangerous as a long-pointed dagger, and supple as the foils he played. Clea always thought (unkindly) that he would have made a perfect aide-de-camp for a despotic General in Early Rome.

At this moment he was looking a bit uncertain of himself. Clea couldn't recall her coming into her shop more than once; Brothers Myron, Robert and Bartram were the usual representatives.

"Just in time for a cup of tea, Andrew."

"Good to know, Baby Sister."

The usual taunt felt weak to both; Andrew fidgeted and neither knew quite what to do. He settled like an awkward pigeon at her little table and she poured tea.

"Smells good, Clea." Andrew held his cup properly (naturally), and sipped from the edge to gather the flavours before he decided if it wanted milk or sugar or lemon. In mixed company, he always took the cream and sugar and all the fripperies, but when he was with his own family he didn't bother with the stuff. "This is a rather light Earl Grey."

"That's because it isn't Earl Grey. I mixed the leaf with bee balm."

"I...like it."

Clea struggled with her temper. It was not simple. With marriage she supposed she _should_ demonstrate more political savvy and less impatience. "Andrew, is something wrong with Feyther or the others?"

"No!" He blurted, shocked. A moment later he had calmed. "No," he took a deep breath. "I've been meaning to see you, and...see...how you're...doing."

Clea blinked. In all honesty she had prepared for all other responses. Puzzled at the incongruity of brotherly affection, she desperately sought a distraction in the guise of sibling concern.

"How is Jasmine?"

Clea instantly felt guilty for her diplomatic wiles because Andrew's face opened up as Iris before the storm-clouds. "She began a silk-painting class at the old school," he said proudly. 'The instructor wants three pieces for the September Exhibit."

"You must be pleased! What is her theme?"

"Er..well...The chough is one...she said the daffodil might be the other...and she won't talk about the third just yet." Andrew coloured.

Clea leaned her small chin into a palm that was scarcely larger, and mused the supreme irony of her position upon the Axis of the world: Now that she was married, her brothers (vapidly bewildered by her sex in the best of times), thought she might be an all-knowing, all-seeing Oracle to bridge the gap between their lack of comprehension and the sheer staggering complexity of that fearsome species known as 'woman.' Clea didn't feel like helping them. Any dunce who'd read _Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady_ would have known the answer to _this_ riddle!

Honestly, Clea was sad for her brother. He was largely unlikeable.

"I'm pleased to see you, Andrew, but is something on your mind?"

"I...just wanted to see how you were doing." Andrew heard himself stumble over a perfectly reasonable explanation and grimaced at himself. "I said that badly, I know. Little sister, I just wanted to see how you were."

"And still happy." Clea kept her voice even and calm. She would not throw a fit in her own shop. "What brought this on, Andrew?" She guessed even as her eyes narrowed to deep blue slits.

Andrew's happiness (and his level of humanity) was directly in proportion to his exposure to his fiancee, Jasmine. And now she had joined an art course?

Jasmine

+ Art

= Mrs. Masters, Guardian of Jasmine and Dowager Dictator for the art club that the other Cheatham wives adored.

Mrs. Masters was not a benign presence in Clea's life...'spiritual cancer' would best describe her influence. "Something from your wonderful, compassionate and loving future mother-in-law?"

Andrew turned the deep rose red of a man about to have a neurological fit. "I don't listen to everything people say," he said in defense (if far too quickly).

"No, of course not. But this is the Odious Mrs. Masters. If she isn't throwing little arrers1 in my face at every opportunity, she is doing so to the man I married. That we have joined in said marriage only creates a single, larger and more convenient target for those arrers."

"I didn't know she was so venomous to you," Andrew (Heaven Love him) said earnestly.

"That's because you never paid attention." Clea snapped, and quickly regretted the impulse. "Brother...we rarely see her without Jasmine, and everyone knows when Jasmine is in the room you could be talking to a trained dancing bear and wouldn't notice if it was chewing up your shoes."

Andrew was willing to accept the importance of Jasmine in his life. "All right, peace, Clea. But she never once stops talking about your Geoffrey, and she can't be making everything up."

Ever since the marriage, Andrew had referred to Geoffrey as "Your Geoffrey" or "Clea's Geoffrey" which sounded like 'trained pet named Geoffrey'. Clea took a long, slow, deep inhalation of patience-enriched oxygen and held it in.

"How is he?" Andrew twisted the conversation desperately. "I mean, you did marry him and I should be concerned with you and your husband."

Clea silently tallied Andrew a barleycorn's point2 for even thinking about that, but she doubted Andrew would stay clever forever. The odds were just against it. "He is doing well enough." She answered courteously. "Thank you."

"We heard his mate was found in the tunnels." Andrew ran his thumb over the lip of his cup, unaware or uncaring of the sheer rudeness of the gesture.

"Yes...how did you find out?"

"I practically live on the water, sister." Andrew was genuinely hurt by this question. "You see all types...and I do mean all types. If there's anything in common with all types, it's that they all talk."

"I can believe that." Clea considered her brother's chosen work. She didn't really understand it save it involved deliveries, freight, and advertising with commissions. "Are you looking for information to stand better amongst your comrades?"

"Give me more credit than that," he scowled. "It's just that the rumours aren't good. People are saying your Geoffrey is being kept away from the case because of...corruption."

Clea's cheeks turned icy. Andrew didn't notice. He was too busy being awkward with his cup.

"Would you like me to ask him?" She leveled the field with a single stroke. Andrew was shocked mute (good), but Clea didn't believe in making light noises in a serious conversation. "I'm not saying I will, but do you want this?"

Andrew was holding his breath. Too late he was remembering the chess-player clad in the guise of his baby sister.

He was vain, foppish, capable of many Deadly Sins, and could hold a grudge with both hands and carry it a mile on his back. But he was not at all stupid.

"Clea," he struggled to speak without speaking down his nose at her—anyone in the family would have appreciated the effort this cost him. "You have married this man and thus what affects him affects you, and what affects you, affects us. If someone is speaking lies, we need to know what weapons we may use in fighting back."

Clea was silent as a tombstone for almost a minute as she thought this over. Andrew never held back on his opinions or arrogance to anyone...but he was holding back for her. Perhaps he was growing up?

"I will do what I can," she said at length. "But I expect you to do something for me as well."

Clea leaned forward slightly, and speared her brother as neatly as a fish upon the serrated beak of a heron. "By the same token, Mrs. Masters poses the same threat to the family. I tell you now, you have my loyalty—as does Geoffrey. She picked and picked at me like a chisel against marl since the day I first saw her—you won't be rid of her I fear, but you can keep an eye on her."

"That means being careful." Andrew was grim. "She supports my hand to Jasmine because she thinks she can marry Feyther."

"I'm sure you're right."

"I've thought it upside and down, and it's the only thing that makes sense." Andrew drank more tea. "She hates you." He said frankly. "I think it's because you're the only real obstacle between her and her goal of Feyther's hand."

"You mean besides Feyther himself."

Andrew tried to smile, but he was weary and slightly ill at the whole mess. "She doesn't think Feyther will object in the end. After all, who could resist her charms?"

Clea snorted, knowing Andrew was right. "Don't stop now, Brother. Show me your understanding of deceit."

"Oh, tcha. Where do you want me to start? She's an opportunistic reptile! Her family's fortune went to her brother since he was the oldest-"

"_And_ the only surviving male." Clea said dryly. Men tended to forget that little fact.

"-and she had to lower her expectations somewhat when she married into Masters Accounting. I suppose she was as surprised as anyone when Jory earned himself a fortune! But she was all about her family's mine-shares and the properties with them." Andrew fidgeted; Clea passed him a plate of buttered bread. "When Jasmine's parents died they were quick enough to take her in, and..."

"I'm impressed, brother. Do go on."

Andrew breathed through his nose in distaste. "She says the family's profits are small but reliable...but we...heard...that they're actually very seemly." He stared at her hopefully. "Myron said it was your Geoffrey who told you that."

"Yes..."

"Jasmine is a wonderful soul," Andrew said with rare feeling. "But I _don't_ think she can stand up to her Aunt. She'll have a hard enough time to break free..." He stared at his cup again. "This is what I fear, sister." He said at last. "She plans to marry Feyther because if she does, then she can have even greater control over Jasmine's properties. Jasmine's heart is on her sleeve. She's probably already agreed to let that Widow stay in control of her finances...she probably told her she would 'take care of the troubles for her'...If someone needs help Jasmine wants to throw money at them to make the problem go away. It will be hard enough to remind her that she has the rights to HER Mine, when her Aunt says _she_ needs money for this or that...but if her Aunt also becomes her father-in-law's wife...she'll turn right around and throw every penny she has into the happiness of the family." Andrew's theory was garbled, but Clea could still follow the trail.

"And who knows better how to make the Cheathams happy than Mrs. Masters? She knows how to wrestle with people." Clea was not joking. Cheathams understood combat.

"Clea, it makes sense." Andrew mashed his fist against the table, wrinkling the cloth. "She's always been ambitious, pushing and pushing Jory further and further on...why would she let _me_ appeal for Jasmine's hand? The fact that we've been friends since childhood doesn't mean a thing to her. She's more the type to press Jasmine into a marriage with a minor-ranking noble who needs the money."

"What, not a rich American?" Clea teased. Andrew's face creased with horror. "I was not serious. She'd tolerate an American the same time she let an Australian or an Irish near her niece."

"Too right by half! It's all about the money, isn't it? If Jasmine really married up, she wouldn't have control of the money. It would go to her husband's expenses. And as the aunt, she wouldn't have as much status. She'll stay in a small pond if it means she's that pond's biggest fish."

"I think you've measured up her mettle quite well." Clea complimented.

"It took me long enough to do it." Andrew scowled. "And I'm running out of time, Sister!"

"You're engaged. It's true she could persuade Jasmine to cry off, but she doesn't want people to look at her suspiciously. And a sudden break of the engagement would do just that!"

"Do you think so?" Andrew was pathetically hopeful.

"I'm as certain as I can be." And Clea hoped that was certain enough. "You're going to have to do some planning, and you'll need all the brether to throw in."

"That's a rather difficult thing to ask." Andrew was already bracing himself for failure.

"Andrew, believe you me...even if we Cheathams didn't stick together, I think we would over the higher cause of salvaging your lady fair from the dragon." Clea smiled and wondered when she had become the default matron of the family? Well, if it gave Elizabeth a rest...

"The law is on Jasmine's side. A few years ago her money would instantly go to her husband assuming her parents would let her have it. Now she has to sign it away to make that happen. So. Start talking," She ordered. "I want to know what the Odious Widow is doing in the social circles of late. And don't give me that look, Andrew! I never paid attention to that stuff and nonsense before...I'm hardly likely to want to do it now!"

* * *

At the same time Clea Lestrade was drawing herself into a Byzantine Plot of her own contrivance, her husband was plodding through the streets of London and wishing he could walk off his problems...or at least walk away from where they were sitting.

Not likely to happen, though. If he couldn't do that back when he was stamping out twenty mile beats a day (not counting the trips to and fro work), he couldn't do it ever. But he needed something to lift his spirits that was more lasting than the fact that the clouds had blown back across the other side of the Thames, giving his portion of the city a tiny breather.

He paused at the edge of the slimy kerb to the sight of a funeral. With the other men he pulled off his hat and held it poised from his chest as the matched black horses rattled to the churchyard. Black ostrich plumes waved in the wake and the deceased had plenty of money (judging by the ornamentation and bangles).

_You can't take it with you, but you can certainly take it with you part of the way,_ Lestrade thought ironically. _And sometimes...it can take you with it!_

The funeral passed just in time for the return of the clouds. Lestrade slapped his hat back on his head and shivered at the dampness soaking down his neck and collar. His twisted foot ached; that of course meant his back ached too and it was getting bad. He needed a place to stop and rest, preferably a warm spot with something to eat.

* * *

The _Malmsey Keg_ was full to the brim and steaming with the scent of roasting sweet chestnuts over coals in the back kitchen. Most of the crowd never noticed the tantalising clouds of roasting nut-meats. They were just sheltering from the stop-and-go spate of cloudbursts. They drank standing up and made idle chatter as they waited for walking weather to return. Lestrade threaded his way with some difficulty through the thick crowd, his nose prickled with the perfume of the unwashed, spilt brews, train soot, silt, and street offal (the less thought of the better). As if the air wasn't thick enough, tobacco smoke hung thick and misty blue. Lamps struggled bravely to do their duty, but they may as well illuminate Mr. Holmes' rooms after one of his infamous pipe-smoking spells.

Lestrade was breathing deep by the time he cleared his usual corner, and stopped to wipe his face with a still-clean handkerchief. One of the tavern lads miraculously saw him and came to the table with his usual bottle and mug.

Lestrade thanked him, paid him, and ordered food to follow the Grozet.

He sank down, back to the wall and took a deep breath of the bottle. Bradstreet complained there was 'nothing much' in the aroma, but Lestrade thought it was the smell of summer. He tipped the bottle slowly into the mug and watched the miniscule beard form on top. Grozet left an incredible lace if it was a good brew.

He took three sips, tasting grain, then bitter, and finally the floral. The painful pressure connecting his left foot and most of his spine started to relax even as the crowd picked up its hubbub and fuss. The London Bells chimed, so he guessed the crowd was nerving itself up for another adventure into the streets.

_I know I'm not as young as I used to be, but this is ridiculous,_ he leaned back to stretch out one foot, then then other, under the shelter of the table. His eyes closed for a moment. _You'll be home before too much longer. Think of that. Don't think about your day._

This good advice worked for almost thirty seconds. Until he opened his eyes to find two all-too-familiar silk top hats bobbing in the top of the crowd. Thoughts of anything cheerful—or thoughts of any nature—dried up like the molt off a horseshoe crab.

* * *

"Good evening, Lestrade." Sherlock Holmes poised at the edge of the table as he tugged at his gloves. Those chilly grey eyes were almost laughing at him—he had surprised Lestrade and that was as good as a small boy popping another child's balloon. As usual, Watson was behind and slightly off to the side—the perfect place to watch others watching each other.

"Hello to you too, Mr. Holmes." Lestrade nodded to both. "Dr. Watson. Would you care to have a sit?"

The two men complied just as Lestrade's dish of laver arrived. Holmes ordered a glass of Normandy perry (Lestrade was sardonically unsurprised to see the man ordering a French glass when there was plenty of superior huffcaps in the Westcountry)3. Dr. Watson chose one of the flagship Beaunes.

"I trust we have not caught you at an inopportune mind?" Holmes asked as Lestrade applied the bitter orange to his laver.

"Not hardly, Mr. Holmes." Lestrade couldn't help but inwardly brace himself. He might visit Baker Street on an occasional evening on his way home, but the reverse was never true.

Sherlock Holmes was abroad, and the Yard had best stay on its toes until he vanished back to the depths of his bachelor rooms.

Gregson had once sworn that Sherlock Holmes was never seen in broad daylight unless he was on pursuit of a case, books, foul experiments, the tobacconist, or music.

Or to quote Gregson's anguished bellow of frustration:

**"A Case, a Compendium, the Chemist's, his Cavendish, or Concert!"**

And damn Gregson if he wasn't alliteratively and absolutely accurate. Lestrade resented Gregson's witticism very dearly just then, because the least display of amusement in _this_ company would lead to bloodshed.

_You're tired out, you imbecile._ Lestrade scolded himself. As hoped, the rebellious laugh trying to escape his throat died. _Best to let events take their natural turn._

"Excellent," Holmes proclaimed. His voice was calm even if his long, nervous hands were seeking something for his occupation. Watson was a second example of calm anticipation. "Do you have time to speak with us over the particulars of a new case?"

"As long as you don't mind my eating." Lestrade sipped his Grozet. "And you would be referring to a case of my knowledge?"

"One can hope." Holmes said mysteriously. "It involves in some part the unfortunate death of your colleague, Sgt. Browne of the Rail Police."

Lestrade missed a cut and laver went sliding over the plate in a flurry of fried oatmeal crust.

Dear Heaven. This wasn't a topic for Grozet. He should have ordered the plum jerkum. Waking from a drunken stupor in a High Street gutter didn't sound as awful as getting through this.

"Browne." He took another drink of Grozet and decided he would need more than a bottle to get through this conversation. Several unsavoury things clotted up his brain, none of them cheerful but he knew what would happen if he failed to assist Holmes in any way.

"I don't know if I can help you with anything, but you may as well try." He sounded childish even to his own ears. "I'm not on the case! They gave it to Gregson!"

"I was not speaking of the case through Gregson's work." Holmes accepted his perry with enviable grace. Watson paused to breathe the fumes of his own red. "I would like to hear your version of the events which led to the unfortunate death of your compatriot."

"'Unfortunate death'...that's a canny way of putting it." Lestrade's control had resumed. He ate another bite of laver and defiantly enjoyed the flavours of the ocean on his tongue. "That's usually what we say about avoidable deaths, you know."

Holmes tilted his head to one side, eyes bright with curiosity, but Lestrade wasn't fooled. This wasn't a small child to be distracted by a bright gewgaw. This was a hunter of men, and he would hunt Lestrade for the clues he needed until his path led him to fresh quarry.

_But what does he want to know? What could be so special about the case...who would have brought him in this mess? Gregson? How could that be? I don't understand any of this! Stay calm. You don't know what's going on..._

"Browne was one of our best." He said at last. _Stick to the truth and you won't have to lie_. "He kept his nose clean and he worked harder than three men. No family, no children...all his friends were police and he wouldn't have let that stop him from arresting any of them for a crime if they'd been guilty. He gave a straight deal to everyone. Had no patience for gulls or spies."

Just saying this hurt. Browne might have been one of the men who'd counted him as a friend but Lestrade would never know...now.

"How often do your departments work together?"

"That depends on our orders." Lestrade wasn't sure he understood the question. "I couldn't tell you. I'm sure I don't know." He put down his fork in favour of another sip from his mug. It was dismayingly light. He lifted his hand and a fresh bottle joined the first. "I've worked a few murders on the train-lines, but I have to be called in for those cases. Normally it's a crime the RP can't handle on their own."

"Can't or won't?" Holmes asked.

"That's a neat question, Mr. Holmes." Lestrade noticed a blot of dried mud on his left cuff and scowled in distaste. He put down his fork again and worked at the spot with his handkerchief until it was much faded. "The best I can do is give you the explanation our superiors give us: "It's not our case until it is."

Watson's normally good-humoured face clenched up: a man strangled between a groan and a guffaw.

"I'm told that's a re-phrasing of the Army's attitude to some problems." Lestrade guessed the cause for the Army Major's reaction.

"You would be right." Watson coughed.

Holmes had pulled out a pencil from somewhere, and used his cuff to make a note—a queer sort of symbol Lestrade failed to recognise upside-down from across the table. "Perhaps if you told us your version of events, beginning when you first collaborated."

Lestrade had been bracing for the blow, but his mouth still went dry. He finished his plate in a few bites and pulled out his date-book. After a moment of paging back and forth, he bent the spine back and held the book across the table for Holmes.

"The dates on the left are the meeting times. The numbers on the right are length of time for the meetings."

"And the marks in the far right margin are quarter-hours?" Holmes inquired.

"A lot of the churchbells follow the quarter-hour." Lestrade blinked at the oddity of having to explain the obviousness of the fact. "If we know what bells are ringing, we make a note of that too—it verifies our location." He cleared his throat. "So many of our citizens are stump-illiterate, but they do know to count time by the bells. So if I take an interview of a witness, I record any bells I hear. In court we may ask that witness, if they were at, say, Shoreditch, they would know where they were and when."

"An ingenious solution to the problem of illiteracy," Holmes actually looked as though he enjoyed the explanation. Yet another example that the gentlemen across the table from Lestrade really were gentlemen. They took their reading and writing for granted, Heaven love their souls.

"The system has flaws, Mr. Holmes, I must warn you. One can't expect all the bells to be operational every day of the year. And newcomer policemen have trouble ciphering out the sound of one church to another. If you're tone deaf you're better off marking the number of peals and how many different bells you think are playing."

"So I see that you have Sgt. Browne in shorthand in the centre of the columns, the date and clock-time on the left, and I presume the NB on the right means you heard no bells."

"That is correct."

Holmes' eyes flicked over the pages with unnerving speed, and he wrote a few more glyphs on his cuff. Lestrade pitied his laundress.

"As to the first meeting, Browne was trying to find the reason for the unexpected rush of water that thawed the frozen earth under the rails that led to the land-slip this Christmas." Lestrade wished Grozets came in larger bottles. "Most of the old coppers who worked in the London Below are dead and gone. The best he could do was me, because I was the last man Davids trained up."

Lestrade took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, pulling his memory back.

"He started simply enough. He recalled that I was trained under Davids, and that he'd 'sent me under a time or two.' At first I thought he meant going in disguise, but he meant under London." Lestrade breathed, settling into the memory. "He thought it over a bit, and asked me if I happened to know if there were any of the Rivers close to the wreck-site of the Hammersmith."

* * *

Watson was always fascinated by the way humans changed (with and without their awareness) to their surroundings. He privately relished the way they could adapt.

To his mind's eye, Lestrade was small, round-headed, dark haired and dark-eyed. This was not in his favour in the language of literature and symbolism. His sallow complexion was pure London and he rarely _kept_ his attention directly on another unless that person was his interrogation victim. The limited direct-eye contact was common among the lower class of citizen and only added to an impression of being sly-faced and shifty.

"_'You were one of Davids' lads. I heard he sent you Under a time or two.' I was about to say yes, of course, I had to go undercover...but then I caught on to what Browne was saying. He meant under the city. "A time or two." I agreed."_ Lestrade opened his eyes, but they were distant, turning inward and not completely aware of his audience. "_He mulled that over with his cigar. 'You wouldn't happen to know if there were any of the Rivers close to the wreck-site?'_

"_I'd have to double back on my notes," I said. "This side of the Thames must have...well...I don't know how many Rivers could be under our feet.'_

"_If this is a natural case, then it's just one of the Lost Rivers coming up and saying hello to us. The slip happened because the ground grew soft and sponged under the ballast. You can still see where the ground was wet—by dawn it glazed over hard as a brick! But that was a cold night, and I can't think of why there would be water coming up beneath the earth to twist the rails out of true, nor do it without coming back now that the weather's softened. In fact, it froze over so rock-solid, that even though most of London is melting fast, there's still dirty great chunks of it left! Now I've been in the business for years, Lestrade, got engineer training before I joined up, but I never seen anything like this.'"_

Lestrade's too-dark eyes shifted again and settled upon Holmes. "I agreed to help him." He assured his table-mates. "He convinced me that he was on the right path, otherwise he wouldn't have come to me for the time of day. Even Gregson will tell you Browne was right nearly all of the time. He didn't ask for help much...he didn't _need_ help."

"You sound as though your relationship was peaceful," Watson entered the conversation gently, "But I have the impression peaceful in the sense of a truce in wartime, and not peaceful as friends?"

"Because we were on opposite sides of the '77 trials." Lestrade said flatly. His hands grew tight around his mug. "I was 'under' in the other sense back then...infiltrated the corrupted officers and at the time he thought I was one of them. It was bad enough that my brothers were in with the Aton Gang! Later he must have decided I had turned my coat and rejoined the honest crowd...he's avoided me ever since that day, and I did my best not to let him suffer the sight of me." Lestrade studied his hands. "At least we got that straightened out between us...before he was murdered."

"In what way did you assist his case?"

Lestrade stopped for a moment. "I was full of belladonna." He said slowly. "It was for another case, and unrelated. If you're going Under, you need to see as well as you can in the dark. The night he died, Browne had a breakthrough. He wanted to show me what he'd found, and..." Lestrade stopped to swallow hard. "He knew it would interest me, because it was a section of Lost Tunnel that had been used by Ivo Quimper-that's Jethro Quimper's horrid father-over forty years hence."

"Belladonna." Watson said softly. "How much were you taking?"

"Too much. It was my last day; I could barely walk about in the day, and even a matchlight scalded my eyes." Lestrade still shuddered at the memory. "My heart was always racing, and I couldn't hold still. It was hard to think straight and I couldn't stop drinking water."

"If you had enough aconite to create those symptoms," Watson did not hide his alarm, "you truly put yourself in great distress. You do not do this often, do you?"

Certainly not! I'm the only me I have, Dr. Watson! I had to take the wretched stuff under orders, but when it affected my work I stopped!" Lestrade was indignant. "It's not the first time that vile brew has come close to killing me, but I'm determined it will be the last!" He stopped himself and stared angrily at his mug, toying with the new ring on his finger.

Belladonna? _And_ he was wearing his wedding band in broad daylight despite the fact that it was gold and someone was bound to attack him for it sooner or later. Watson was bewildered at this incongruity of choice. Most men _didn_'t wear wedding bands. He wondered about Lestrade's personal level of risk-taking.

"The stuff was just starting to ease off when I went Under," Lestrade continued his story reluctantly. "It was damned cold, I remember that. Mostly, I followed Browne and Tubberman. We needed lights-every bit of 'em-to get to that sluice gate."

"Is that when you were attacked?"

"If you want to call it that. For my part all I saw was a brilliant scald of yellow as a lantern went up in my face. I was good as blind and something sent me backwards into the water. I didn't know anything once that water went over my head!" Lestrade shivered, and let go of his hands long enough to rub them in unconscious memory of cold. "I couldn't say how long I was swept with the current. There was a bit of rock or ice and I caught on to it with my gloves and managed to crawl out of the water to a ledge but it was all iced and covered in slime and clay and it was all I could do to keep from falling back in the water."

"You found Browne, if I recall the reports." Holmes prodded.

"I fell over him, you mean." Lestrade spat. "I couldn't see anything, like I told you. I didn't know Tubberman had killed him and for all I knew Tubberman was in the cut too! But when I felt the man's face I could tell it was Browne." He stopped and took a deep breath. "I went through his pockets, got a broken lamp going again, and used it to find my way out. The problem was, I had been dazzled by the lanterns going in, and I wasn't sure where I needed to go to get out. I got myself hopelessly lost and broke out about a quarter-mile below the Hammersmith's original wreck site." He gulped hard, forced to remember how he had gotten out.

"This would be an excellent time to ask a few directional questions." Holmes observed. "You said you went through Browne's pockets. What did you find?"

"His match-box-well, if you want to call it that. He had a small tinned box with wax rubbed around the lip to keep water out. It had candle stubs for his pocket-lamp, waterproofed matches, a coil of cotton wick for emergencies; I found his notebook and its pencil in his left coat pocket. His money-purse was in the right inside a double-sewn secret pouch. And his watch was still on his person. I didn't take it with me." He said defensively. "I was afraid even then that identifying him would be difficult."

"A man's watch can help."

"The rats were already scuttling about. Forgive me for being so bold at the table but it's the truth. I covered his face with his coat before I left." Lestrade was growing paler the further he travelled through his story. "_Most_ of the time we're supposed to stay with the dead, but I've seen what happens when you try to keep a hoarde of rats away from...from what they want. There were hundreds of the vermin." Lestrade couldn't bring himself to say it. He looked down, ashamed, and the other two politely drank so they couldn't say they had witnessed his humiliation.

Holmes had been listening with his eyes half-lidded, like a Dark Lantern waiting to be used. "In Mr. Browne's effects you found his watch, his lamp-kit, his money purse and notebook and pencil."

"Yes. _That_ I took with me. Rats love the taste of this paper." Lestrade tapped his little notebook, relieved to move on.

"An odd thing to say!" Holmes picked up the book again and stared intently at the paper, then the binding, spine, and prodded the stitches sewing the leaves together. He finally sniffed it.

"I'd guess they like these little books because the paper is soft for the pencil, and there's a lot of hide-glue holding it all in one place." Lestrade said drily.

"Your book smells like myrtle." Holmes told him.

"Which is what I smell like when I'm not crawling in sewers..." Lestrade stopped abruptly, with a bewildered expression twisting across his lean face.

"Something wrong?" Watson asked in concern.

"I...overlooked...something...important." Lestrade said slowly.

Holmes leaned forward, eyes sinking into the little man.

"That...wasn't a sewer...at all...because it was clean." Lestrade didn't look like he believed himself. "I couldn't smell anything but clay and cold water, melting snow and silt and there was a little bit of musty decay and slime and what you'd expect if you were in an underground river...but how could any body of water in London be clean enough that it didn't smell of sewage, or garbage, or factory waste?"

It was a good question. The three looked at each other.

"Perhaps it really was a Lost River?" Watson hoped that didn't sound trite.

Lestrade was slowly shaking his head from side to side, his dark eyes completely dazed.

"That's not lost, Dr. Watson." He said firmly. "That's just impossible."

* * *

1 Lancashire dialect for 'arrows' (darts)

2 About 1/3rd of an inch. Clea is not thrilled with her brother's efforts to communicate with her at this moment.

3 Continental Perry was often sweeter than the British dry Pear drink; Holmes may have been unconsciously saluting his French forebearers, but to Lestrade it is a tragedy to overlook the fact that the British Isles had one of the world's proudest reputations for Perry making. Huffcaps: a species of pear favoured for the use of making perries and pear ciders (the two are not the same). Beaune: Watson must like this wine, for he had a glass of it at the start of SIGN.


End file.
